Featured Unbelievers in Churches

First, the term ekklesia according to its etymological meaning cannot be found in the history of the Greek language where it is was ever used to simply mean "called out of the world." A term is defined by context and by usage and "called out of the world" is a nexistent usage in Greek literature and the Greek Septuigent or the Greek New Testament. So you are simply being imaginative but rather than exegetical.

Furthermore, you are confusing the effectual call (regeneration) with the church.

Now you are confusing election "in Christ" with the church. No place in Scripture does it say the church existed before the world began - nowhere.

Only by confusing regeneration and election with the church can you invent your doctrine.

Again, the founder, the foundation, the first members added to the church HAD NLD TESTAMENT EXISTENCE - NONE - NOTHING - NADA! Paul tells you that the New Testament church is a New Testament truth/revelation not an Old Testament truth/revelation.

Your whole position is a position of inferences based upon confusing terms, confusing doctrines.

If that is so, then why does God forbid to have some kind of "brethren" in the congregational body of water baptized believers what your doctrine of the church includes??? Those "brethren" who act immoral or go into false doctrine are to be removed from the Lord's churches (1 Cor. 5:11; 2 Thes. 3:6 "brother") but your kind of invented church necessarily must include them????

You are doing the same thing that Augustine and Luther did with the parable of the tares in Matthew 13. Matthew 13 is the text where the universal visible and universal invisible church was hatched. The field is "the world" not the church. The tares and seed are the professing "kingdom" not the church. Prior to 400 A.D. the "universal" church cannot be found in Christian literature. Indeed, the early church fathers called each local congregation "catholic" simply to contrast it with the Jewish synoguoge which was required you to be Jewish. The New Testament congregation was "universal" in the make up of its membership requiring no specific ethnicity.

Prior to the Reformation, you cannot find cannot find any "universal invisible church" in Christian literature. You can find the prospective future church made up of all the elect, but which is an actual future assembly in one place, thus continuing the historic usage of the term ekklesia as a visible localized body of baptized believers, except in this case, its location is in heaven and yet future WITHOUT ANY PRESENT EXISTENCE.

 

I have made the assertion that God has always had one called out people from all eternity. Under the administration of the New Covenant is common to call God’s people “the Church”. In the Old Testament, both before and after the administration of the Old Covenant, God’s people were referred to by various terms in order to emphasis their special covenant standing before God.

In the Old Testament the Hebrew work qahal is most often used to refer to the gathering of God’s covenant people. In the LXX the Greek work ekklesia is used to translate qahal. As we know ekklesia is the Greek word for the called out assembly, or the Church. The Complete Word Study Dictionary has this to say:

I am not denying that the New Testament Church is different in administration, and function, than the covenant nation of Israel. What is not different is how individuals were saved. All come through the blood. Old Testament saints placed their faith in Jehovah. Their faith was fulfilled in Christ (or made perfect). Old Testament saints were no less God’s children then the person who turns to faith in Christ today.

The Reformers and Puritans referred to the Old Testament saints are part of the Old Testament Church. They used that phrase not so much to describe a functioning organism as they did the redemptive aspect of the individual’s faith, and the Old Testament saint’s standing before God relative to the New Testament saint’s standing before God. Both are children of God. That is the universal aspect of the universal church.

 

FROM A Baptist Catechism with Commentary...by W.R. Downing;

 

OK. I am done participating in this thread.

 

So you are saying that the Church was in exist before the messiah of it actually had come to die on the earth?

 

Why> Seemed to be having some good discussions on this thread!

 

Personally I can't think of a better place than church for non believers. However if the believers are so weak they don't know or don't care what happens to them. Then there is something wrong with the believers in that church.
MB

 

Here's how I sometimes word the need for salvation

I ask the hearers before me to do this

Ask the Holy Spirit----Holy Spirit, am I saved? Have I been born again??

Do you think that if you ask the Holy Spirit that question---that He will lie to you? That He will tell you you're saved when you're really not??

What does the Bible say??

The Holy Spirit bears witness with our spirit that we are the children of God! Ask the Holy Spirit today if you are saved!! He'll tell you the truth!!

 

Catechisms are not infallible:

Both the Spanish word "Iglesia" and the French word L'elglise" are similar to our English word "church" and can refer either to building or assembly. Thus the statement is false.

Also note that the author's constant use of the LXX is irrelevant, as is many of the posters' here. The LXX is simply a translation of the Hebrew Scriptures in to the Greek language, and it wasn't a very good translation at that. Translation to translation the KJV is a much better translation of the Scripture than the LXX with all of its weaknesses and errors. It wasn't that good of a translation. It is not the inspired Word of God. It is only a translation. Keep that in mind when discussing meanings.